Editorial Staff1. You want earnings? We’ve got earnings.
It’s the biggest week yet for this earnings season, particularly for mega cap tech names. Google parent Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook parent Meta, Apple and Amazon all are scheduled to deliver quarterly reports. Companies have generally reported solid results, with some exceptions. This trend has contributed to volatility in the market as investors look for a bottom. On Friday, stocks surged to cap their best week since June, even as the Federal Reserve gears up to raise rates again while inflation remains hot. (Follow live market updates.) Here are the major companies reporting this week:
- Tuesday: General Motors, Coca-Cola, UPS, JetBlue (before the bell); Alphabet, Microsoft, Mattel (after the bell
- Wednesday: Boeing, Kraft Heinz (before the bell); Meta, Ford (after the bell)
- Thursday: McDonald’s, Comcast, Southwest (before the bell); Amazon, Apple, Intel (after the bell)
2. Xi tightens his grip on China
China’s ruling Communist Party wrapped up its congress this weekend, leaving no doubt about President Xi Jinping’s authority. He is in line for a third term as president and is poised to stay on for longer than that, as the core leadership group around him is now even more stocked with loyalists. The changes also indicate, according to political analysts who study China, that the nation’s government is putting more emphasis on its increasingly fraught relationship with the United States. Then there’s the mystery surrounding Hu Jintao, China’s former leader, who was publicly removed from his seat next to his successor, Xi, and ushered out of the party’s congress on Saturday. As he was pulled away, Hu spoke to Xi, who appeared more focused on the meeting. China has not explained the incident with Hu.
3. UK prime minister race sorts itself out
For a minute there, it looked like Boris Johnson might actually come back to 10 Downing Street not two months after he left. His successor, Liz Truss, quit as prime minister in an even more embarrassingly spectacular fashion than Johnson did after his scandal-plagued tenure, and Johnson had suggested before that he could return. But he withdrew from the Conservative leadership race over the weekend, paving the way for Rishi Sunak, his former finance minister, to take the reins. Sunak had finished second to Truss in their race during the summer after pushing back on her economic plans, which called for steep tax cuts. Markets rebelled once her government actually proposed such an economic package as Britain contended with a cost-of-living crisis and high levels of wealth inequality, and Truss retreated. Now investors are looking to Sunak for stability.
4. U.S. slams Russia over ‘dirty bomb’ claims
Russian authorities have been spreading claims that Ukraine is preparing to use a so-called dirty bomb, a device that can poison a region with radioactivity without a nuclear explosion. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other critics denounced Russia’s “transparently false” message as a pretext for potential escalation as Vladimir Putin’s ground forces lose ground to Ukraine’s military. Meanwhile, a million Ukrainians are without electricity following a barrage of Russian strikes on cities and infrastructure. Read live war updates here.
5. ‘Black’ magic at the box office
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Warner Bros. conjured quite the spell at the weekend box office. The superhero flick “Black Adam” scored the best opening weekend for any movie since July with a $67 million domestic haul. It’s a relief for movie theaters, which had been craving a big blockbuster-style movie after “Thor: Love and Thunder” and “Top Gun: Maverick” ran their lucrative courses. But the win may be short-lived. Superhero movies tend to have fairly large dropoffs in their second weekends of release, and “Black Adam” still has to recoup a reported $200 million budget. The real test of the box office’s mettle will come Nov. 11, when the hotly anticipated “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” lands in theaters.
Source: CNBC
